Title Year Category
Flaming for Weeds 2000-2009
Description

Iowa row crop farmers discovered flame cultivation several years ago. However, it’s something new to the state’s vegetable farmers. Gary and Nancy Guthrie, Nevada, decided to see what it could do for carrots. The Guthrie operation is just …


Publish Date
February 5, 2001

PFI Staff
Practical Farmers of Iowa
Cooperators
Gary and Nancy Guthrie
Dennis and Eve Abbas
Description

This has been our second season using Washburn’s economic analysis tool with our data. This tool was shared in a 1998 Upper Midwest Organic Farming Conference Workshop. The workshop was presented by two farms – Spring Hill Farm …


Publish Date
February 4, 2001

PFI Staff
Practical Farmers of Iowa
Cooperators
Jan Libbey & Tim, Andrew
Jessica Landgraf
Description

Angela Tedesco’s Turtle Farm, near Granger, feeds CSA members in the Des Moines area. She produces abundant vegetable crops – and usually a good crop of cucumber beetles. Angela writes: “This cucumber beetle trial was an attempt to …


Publish Date
February 3, 2001

PFI Staff
Practical Farmers of Iowa
Cooperators
Angela Tedesco
Description

Solon members Jeff and Susan Zacharakis-Jutz and their children maintain sheep and dairy goat herds that they raise using a minimum of synthetic chemicals. They find internal parasites to be one of the more difficult challenges to manage …


Publish Date
February 2, 2001

PFI Staff
Practical Farmers of Iowa
Cooperators
Jeff and Susan Zacharakis-Jutz
Description

What is the most profitable way to supplement the rations of milking cows that are being rotationally grazed? There is little consensus among those who graze. Our trial this year was devised to shed some light on this …


Publish Date
February 1, 2001

PFI Staff
Practical Farmers of Iowa
Cooperators
Matt and Diana Stewart
Description

Readers of the PFI newsletter may remember that in 1998 the organization received a grant from the USDA SARE program to evaluate “fertility paradigms.” Paradigms are ways of looking at the world, constructions that we put on reality …


Publish Date
February 11, 2000

PFI Staff
Practical Farmers of Iowa
Description

Gary and Nancy Guthrie, Nevada, raise vegetables for their own CSA (community supported agriculture), Growing Harmony Farm. As the son of a corn entomologist, Gary keeps a particular eye on challenges from the insect world. In their organic …


Publish Date
February 10, 2000

PFI Staff
Jace Hadish
Cooperators
Gary and Nancy Guthrie
Neely-Kinyon Research Farm
Ron and Maria Rosmann
Cropping Systems 1988-1999
Description

Jeff Klinge and Deb Tidwell, Farmersburg, have documented the economics of cropping as they transitioned to organic production. Jeff’s reports have appeared in these PFI annual publications, but in the past the “conventional” comparison came from his own …


Publish Date
February 9, 2000

PFI Staff
Practical Farmers of Iowa
Cooperators
Jeff Klinge and Deb Tidwell
Richard and Sharon Thompson
Nitrogen 1988-1999
Description

The PFI on-farm research program has seen a resurgence of nitrogen trials with the addition of cooperators associated with the Iowa Farm Bureau. Not that we got nitrogen all figured out with the first 70 replicated trials! Yes, …


Publish Date
February 8, 2000

PFI Staff
Practical Farmers of Iowa
Cooperators
John and Joan Lubke
Bryan and Lisa Sievers
Dave and Becky Struthers
Brad and Chris Harvey
Description

Dennis and Eve Abbas, Hampton, carried out a trial that may not look like a fertility experiment. They compared two planting populations of corn, looking for effects on nitrogen sufficiency. This was the second year of the trial. …


Publish Date
February 7, 2000

PFI Staff
Practical Farmers of Iowa
Description

It has been nearly a decade since the rise in interest in strip intercropping, led in part by PFI. A reason many producers discontinued intercropping was the system’s failure to consistently deliver the yield benefits inherent in that …


Publish Date
February 6, 2000

PFI Staff
Practical Farmers of Iowa
Cooperators
Paul and Karen Mugge
Description

The Dordt College Agricultural Stewardship Center continued in 1999 its comparison of three kinds of corn hybrid: a well-known commercial hybrid, its Bt-gene cousin, and an inexpensive hybrid from a local seed company (Table 7, click to view). …


Publish Date
February 5, 2000

PFI Staff
Practical Farmers of Iowa
Cooperators
Gary and Venita Wilcox
The Dordt College Agricultural Stewardship Center